How To Use Budgeting To Boost Productivity
Posted on June 23, 2011 by GuestPost
Categories: Productivity
This post was written by a guest author. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guest post guidelines.
There are all sorts of techniques for budgeting well and just as many for being more productive. Budgeting and productivity have a lot in common: One helps your money go further or directs more of it toward what you really want; the other helps your time go further or directs more of it toward what is most important to you.
That said, budgets are typically more concrete than productivity plans, probably because with a budget you have hard and fast units of measurement. With productivity you’re stuck with the vagueness of time, and the value of an hour varies from person to person. (It also varies depending on what hour it is. I don’t invest much time planning out 3:00 a.m.) Even so, there are solid budgeting principles that transfer easily into a basic productivity paradigm.
Preserve Important Funds
Budgeting is all about setting priorities. When you’re laying out a budget for the month, you start by writing down your most important expenses, which are probably shelter and food. Other things get added in order of importance, depending on your priorities.
Productivity requires the same eagle-eye view. What is most important to you? Notice that I asked what is important, not urgent. Many have talked about the line between important and urgent, but the concept bears repeating: just because something is due tomorrow does not mean it’s important. It might be, but the deadline doesn’t make it that way. The important things should be the driving force behind your productivity. You want to get more done in less time so you can focus more time on something important.
So what should be important in your productivity budget? What in your life is important enough that it warrants preservation and sanctity in the chaos of time expenditures? The answer will vary. If your occupation aligns with what you consider your calling in life, it may take top priority, regardless of the hours or effort required. For me, two of my most important things right now are spending time with my husband, who recently returned from Iraq, and taking care of my physical and mental health. This means I’ve gotten really good at saying no. No, I don’t work on volunteer projects that stress me out, even for a good cause. No, I don’t work extra hours at work, because no one has given me a reason to that trumps being home on time for dinner. No, I won’t sacrifice my sleeping hours, even for the side business I want to start up. Right now that business is not more important in my time budget than my priorities.
Preserve the time-funds you decide to dedicate to your most important priorities. Think of them the same way you’d approach a mortgage: if you don’t pay that bill, you’re going to lose what you’re paying for.
Keep an Emergency Fund
Pretty much every budgeting guru recommends keeping an emergency fund—the only thing they disagree on is how many months of expenses that fund should cover. And emergency fund is essentially how you deal with urgent expenses. Though I can’t tell you how large your productivity emergency fund should be, I can say that you need one.
Maybe it’s only a few hours on Saturday; maybe it’s the extra hour early you wake up every morning. Regardless of when it is, you should have an emergency buffer for your time. Some things may take longer than you plan, or maybe you’ll want them to take longer because you’re enjoying yourself so much. Either way, having that extra time set aside for unplanned time expenditures will help you relax more and be able to preserve the time funds set aside for important things.
Don’t Borrow from Tomorrow
Most people agree that in terms of personal finance, debt is a pretty silly idea. It can be justified by certain circumstances (a home, an education, a particularly nasty set of dire straits), but it should be a last resort, not a ready solution.
When it comes to productivity, the stakes are a little higher. You can’t borrow time from your future self. The time you’ll have a year or two from now is not the same thing as the time you have now. There are times when you can justify time debt: If you put the time into the business now, you’ll have more time to spend with your family later, etc. But this is truly dependent on circumstances. Not everyone needs to go into debt to get an education; not everyone who works needs to work overtime to earn family time. Consider this: Since when did you have to earn family time? Since when did you have to earn the right to sleep? Since when did you have to earn the hours you spend developing your passions?
The answer, I’m sure you know, is never. Your time belongs to you, first and foremost. If you can avoid it, don’t go bankrupt thinking you owe your time to others and borrowing time from your future self. Your future self may not thank you for the bills you’ve accumulated.
So put your priorities first and budget your time down from there. If you end up not having time for something, it probably wasn’t all that important in the first place. You can’t afford it because you’d rather spend your time on better things. When you tighten your budgeting belt, you know you’ll have to drop the non-essentials. Think the same way when you consider productivity budgeting. If you’re putting the most important things first, your budget will never feel too restrictive. It will only feel rich.
Do you have any budgeting advice you can apply to productivity?
This guest post is contributed by Kristy Stewart, a productivity blogger for Power.ME. She enjoys writing, editing, and cooking. If you’d like to see more financial advice applied to productivity and time management, see her post “Stop-Loss Strategies for Fewer Worries” on the Power.ME blog.
Photo by RambergMediaImages
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Comments (3)
I would want to speak a bit about the “Emergency Money”, If you would save each month even 20$-50$ aside, you`ll have major funding in emergency case in few years, its really important to save your money while you can, and not get loans afterwards.
You would not even feel the “loss” of this money in each month, and in case of anything happens, you have the money to withdraw right away.
This is a great point for dealing with money. Pay yourself first, and you won’t miss the money.
It applies as well when you apply money principles to productivity, as the author says:
[...] more from this post that applies budgeting principles to productivity and time management, visit SimpleProductivityBlog. The post was written by Power.ME’s Kristy [...]